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Opera Being Composed On Twitter
musefrog writes "The BBC is reporting that the UK's Royal Opera House is to stage an opera created through social networking site Twitter. 'Members of the public have been invited to submit their 'tweets' online — messages of up to 140 characters — which will form the new libretto.The first scene of the as-yet-untitled work has already been completed and features a man who has been kidnapped by a group of birds. Excerpts will be performed at the Royal Opera House in September.' I'm personally looking forward to lots of idiotic net memes and inane emo ramblings being trilled out by aging sopranos."
...watching it in Opera.
I see a little silhoutette of a man
Make Your Aria.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
You never know. They might get a hottie like Netrebko to do a performance.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
This is stupid.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Oh @Maria! I #love you more than you will ever know! Together we shall live, watching kings come and go! (cont'd at http://twitlonger.com/)
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
The positive reviews for this will total 140 characters or less
Test me and I will chronicle your pain - The Archivist (Diablo 3)
@twitopera: Full of fail. It is a pile of excrement and it stinketh to high heaven. FAIL. LUDICROUS FAIL.
Sent from your iPad.
Well, they could have done worse, they could have used YouTube comments.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
A fusion of two of the most annoying things on the planet.
This story reminded me of this.
Developers: We can use your help.
.. and then the man starts 'tweeting' as a result of the Stockholm Syndrome?
...about something I will never use.
Jeesh, stop spreading this lame hype. Maybe politics on twitter was news, barely. Now opera on twitter? What's next, water ski jumping while writing the next Jaws over Twitter?
I just don't get Twitter. I'd rather read about my dad picking lint out of his bellybutton than sign up for an account; which from what I've seen is about the same thing.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"William is languishing in a tower, having been kidnapped by a group of birds who are anxious for revenge after he has killed one of their number." ... "Hans has promised to rescue him. The Woman With No Name is off to her biochemistry laboratory to make a potion to let people speak to the birds."
This will only be surpassed when Uwe Boll makes a movie based on MySpace.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
The birds wouldn't, by chance, be swallows of some sort? Did they run African SwallOS (TM) or European SwallOS (TM)? Were husky coconuts or rabid rabbits involved?
That's all. Off you go, then.
it will be a light opera :)
Well, I suppose Tony could sing, but I bet the rest of them would do better.
Why bother
First words spoken: "Do you like mudkipz?"
Twitter. Is there /anything/ it can't do ?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
And it is the only service, that pretty much started that way.
I have yet to see teens use it. While it seems to be the big craze for midlife-crisis men. ;)
I hope that means it dies faster. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Reminds me of Jerry Springer: The Opera which was criticised for its liberal usage of obscene language it was actually quite entertaining. Twitter may reflect average intelligence in an embarrassing way but that should provide some amount of entertainment. Can you blame them for trying something new with an old "dead" art form that men comically dread being dragged to? At least give them credit for experimentation and trying new things. You know opera used to be about debauchery and shocking deaths and emotion ... I guess they're just updating those things to the new heights we sometimes experience them as in modern times.
My work here is dung.
They're composing a new browser from Norway via Twitter that will form a new Toshiba subnotebook?
... I thought twitter was only for reading up about what Ashton Kutcher is doing right this very second. OOOoH He's taking a dump, what a delight to know!
While I do like the idea of Fine Arts trying to be innovative instead of just replaying past performances that have been successful this is a little ridiculous. I'm guessing this is a publicity stunt of sorts...."There are a lot of people talking about Twitter these days but not so many people talking about the Opera. Let's make an Opera based on Twitter. People will talk about it then!" instead of a being a genuinely interesting idea. It seems too much like the Opera conceding that people would rather sit around and write/read really short and inane posts than attend a lengthy artistic story.
As a side note, the heavy exposure that Twitter is getting makes me want to punch myself in the face repeatedly. I explored the world of Twitter for a couple of hours a while back to see what the buzz was about and I just...don't....get it. I think you would have to be a special kind of person to be reasonably funny/interesting/entertaining on a consistent basis using 140 characters or less. The Twitter posts I did read (And I fully admit that I did not read a huge amount of them) were not in any way worthwhile to me. Obviously a pretty large number of people disagree with me though.
you say it like this is some sort of stretch of the imagination, uwe boll making a myspace movie
david fincher of all people, he of fightclub and seven fame, is actually making a movie based on facebook:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10271662-36.html
i cannot believe fincher is doing this. my esteem for the man just went into the toilet. the whole idea seems like such a narcissistic absurdity. just the effort of trying to imagine the kind of person a facebook movie would appeal to fills me with nausea
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I am the very model of a modern inter-netizen
I frequent digg and slashdot just like any savvy citizen
I've earned my stripes and now can gripe as well as any denizen...
But now I'm set, we're at the Met, and trolling in real life, my friend!
But now he's set, we're at the Met, and trolling in real life, my friend!
But now he's set, we're at the Met, and trolling in real life, my friend!
But now he's set, we're at the Met, and trolling in real life, my friend, my friend!
You ought to be able to send Midi through Twitter.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Complete bullshit! Everyone knows the future of social efforts will come from Second Life ^^^^ Facebook ^^^ Myspace ^^^^ IRC ^^^ BBSes ^^^ group meetings.
This same old shit keeps getting dug up and reanimated. Sure it looks like a person, but it's still a corpse. ... Nothing to see here, move along.
No, but, yeah, but, no, but, yeah, but, no, but, yeah but I know because I'm not. They don't scare me! Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got, I'm just Vicky Pollard from round the corner from the block. V to the P to the Icky to the Ollard. Oh, my God! That is so unfair! This is like, well, sexual harassment! If you like, fancy me why don't you just say so? God, this is exactly like the time Miss Rennig, who everyone knows is a total lesbian, made Candice Burton stay behind after PE, started telling her off for gobbing on Sunita Geschwani's hair. But everyone knows she only made her stay late because she wanted to get off with her, cuz when she was telling her off her legs were wide open and Candice reckons she could see her spider. No, but yeah, but no, because if you don't let me in then Blazin' Squad are well, gonna give you beatings because I've actually already met them already anyway, actually, down at the Radio 1 Roadshow at Weston Super-Mare! You remember, it was the time I got fingered by Chris Moyles and Hayley Evers reckons she saw Jo Whiley taking a dump in the sea. But, anyway I have met Blazin' Squad and they said I should definitely come backstage and see 'em and do 'em, and anyway I do know them already because I'm their cousin. And if Rowan Gordon says I'm not then don't listen to him because everyone knows he's mental because he once shoved his knob through Miss Mayal's letterbox. No, but, yeah, but, no, but, yeah, but, no, but, yeah but I know because I'm not wasting police time because you know Micha? Well, she saw the whole thing, right, because she was bunking off school because she was gonna go down the wimbley and get off with Luke Griffiths, only she never because he's been trying to grow a moustache but it just looks like pubes, so she got off with Luke Torbet instead, only don't tell Bethany that because she's fancied Luke Torbet ever since she flashed her fanny at him during Home Ec'.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Extra extra! World's greatest opera sucks
I hear that operas used to be composed with nothing more than paper and pen! How was that even possible? How are you gonna paste and cut other peoples ideas with just that?
Except true Artistic integrity.
If it ain't broke, DON'T fix it.
Assholes are cheap today, cheaper than yesterday...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRABshOnfCU
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Even the royal opera has problems to set 140 characters on stage
Seriously - what is it about Twitter? It's a text message rebroadcast. (oh joy!) Why would we want to make up ridiculous services on Twitter?
Coming soon:
GCC compiler - twitter edition!
MS Word for Twitter!
Active Directory - Twitter edition!
How to publish ASCII porn through Twitter, LINE BY LINE!?!?!
Wikipedia was an interesting experiment - a broad-scale collaboration using a simple collaboration tool. Obviously it was a good idea. But in a few years, how many of these Twitter-isms are we going to remember as face-palms of buzzword idiocy? /Methinks society is due for a twitter-ectomy.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Last time performance work was attempted collaboratively on the internet?
"Snake on the plane"
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
don't you think it's the Opera Company that looks dumb here? This seems like the most desperate, and obvious, attempt in the world to widen its audience. You can't go anywhere or do anything anymore without being invited to 'follow us on Twitter.' When I'm bombarded that often by the same advertising I have to think that the product being peddled is hopelessly out of date. Everyone seems to want to get on the Twitter bandwagon regardless of whether it has anything to do with them or their business.
There was a time in the arts where it might have been somewhat bold and refreshing to engage the audience in some way. But that was about 40 years ago. To suggest that tweets from the public will be used for a libretto seems, to me anyway, to be far more about getting on a bandwagon and hoping for the best, than it does about art. Sometimes I wonder if the world can get any sillier. Then I have my answer.........
As much as I never thought I'd ever say such a thing...
maybe we really do need gatekeepers like the RIAA.
you just need to find the appropriate hashtag, like #fatherspickinglint, and you'll find a bunch of related posts.
Announcer: Ladies and gentleman, the twitter opera is about to start, please turn of all cell phones and other mobile devices. *audience storms out of the opera, tweeting: OMG you never believe what they just asked*
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1907543
Well, not an opera, of course, but probably more fun than what they will produce. And you can actually understand what they are singing.
Narrator - Lyric mezzo
Lonely male hero - Spinto tenor
The only girl on the Internet - Lyric coloratura soprano
The Admin - Dramatic bass-baritone
The Troll - Buffo tenor
3 cam whores - 2 Lyric Soprano, 1 Lyric Mezzo,
Chorus of 13 y/o boys - Treble/counter-tenor
Anon chorus - Tenor, counter-tenor, basses, & baritones
Carl Orff sized orchestration with incessant humming fans and effect percussion.
Problem is, the RIAA is precisely who would approve such a thing. It's perfect -- it's hot, it's trendy, it's what all the young people are talking about (or what we think they're talking about), and it's cheap to make.
And, some people might even like something like this -- while the things we like might not appeal to everyone else.
The reason we don't need gatekeepers -- why we really don't want gatekeepers -- is precisely so that we can have good stuff, and tune out the crap like this.
And thus, we, the audience, become the gatekeepers.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Is it me? Or is the internet getting lamer every day?
Somebody get that fail whale out of the way! It's blocking my view!
Pancakes. Oh I blew it.
We've done this already in Umeå, Sweden. Only difference is we used 100 word entries and had an improvisational part in the middle of the opera based on text messaging from the audience. Yours truly hacked it all together, well most of it anyway.
Pardon me for being a pedant, but if you're just writing the libretto then you're not really composing the opera. There's a pretty clear line of demarcation between the librettist, who writes the words, and the composer, who writes the music.
To be fair, I live with a Polish family, and it seems Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks get their Polish dubs done properly - I was really impressed at the quality of the voice-acting on The Incredibles, Beauty and the Beast, and Shrek 2.
...by a real opera singer. It's somewhat car-crash TV.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8195041.stm
Watch to the very end for another traumatic excerpt - about, erm... nuts.